A Magical World War, or What if Voldemort had won?

[Xondoure]

See point 3.

Seriously, I love the books, but that masquerade would fall apart in a fortnight, if not quicker. Rowling just don't treat it serious enough.

What conflicting ideas exactly? The wizarding world basically lives in a pocket dimension right next to ours, and there is almost certainly some sort of effect that makes it harder for muggles to believe what they're seeing is magic (dementors, platform 9 3/4, It only goes so far, but to me the premise seems to be people see what they think they should see.)

[Ravens_cry]

It would take a high strength SEP field given how many mudbloods and half-bloods there is at Hogwarts.

[Avilan the Grey]

It would take a high strength SEP field given how many mudbloods and half-bloods there is at Hogwarts.

Exactly. Plus the inconsistency of the amount of knowledge the other way.
Steam Trains, type writers, lightbulbs, the Night Bus... But no knowledge of the most basic things? Really?

[Xondoure]

Exactly. Plus the inconsistency of the amount of knowledge the other way.
Steam Trains, type writers, lightbulbs, the Night Bus... But no knowledge of the most basic things? Really?

Well this is sort of my point. If we're going to take the wizarding world at face value. Then given how it was portrayed the muggles don't stand a chance. A more realistic wizarding world might have more problems, but then it wouldn't be Harry Potter.

[Ravens_cry]

Exactly. Plus the inconsistency of the amount of knowledge the other way.
Steam Trains, type writers, lightbulbs, the Night Bus... But no knowledge of the most basic things? Really?

I think Rowling's wisest world building decision was not to write about the present. Seriously, with modern social networking, heck, good old fashioned forums, it would be much harder to keep it a secret.
I can see it now . . .

scarhead42: hey, gotz cepted at hogwarts lol learn magix hax UNIVERSE!
rusty69: nowayz! me 2!
Nerdette: Well, of course, everyone knows about Hogwarts. I will send you a scan of "Hogwarts: A History" It is quite fascinating reading.
scarhead42: pass
rusty69: pass
HWMNBNWO:they have carriages pulled by invisible skeleton horses. I read about it online, here's a link.
Nerdette: Right . . . *Nerdette raises an eyebrow dubiously*
scarhead42: lol
rusty69: rofl

[pendell]

Well, again. It's enough to utterly annihilate the current day armed forces of Britain, France and the United States to a man.

It's not going to eliminate humanity, but it is going to cause a heavy dent militarily. Enough to say... win a war.

If the entire armed forces were to stand up against a wall and allow themselves to be easy targets, yes. As it is , they don't. They don't even if they are unaware of wizards specifically. There are all kinds of people who try to kill military service people by surprise, and they train both to avoid that and to avoid losing the whole oxcart at once to a 'decapitation' strike.

For one thing, recall that there are still plenty of SSBNs out in the ocean. If you're limited to line-of-sight weapons, it would be quite difficult to hunt them down and hit them with an Ava Kadavra or whatever. We can't use nukes in this scenario, but plenty of submarines are equipped with TLAMs et al that would allow them to cause no end of headache ... if they knew what targets to shoot at.

Wizard force is like any other force -- it only has an effect if it's used intelligently. During WWII in 1940 France, the Order of Battle showed France and Britain's military forces to be equal or superior to the Germans, but they were still catastrophically defeated because the Germans understood war with combustion engines far better than the allies did.

If we were to take the end of book 6 (which I haven't read, but still) as kickoff point, it seems to me that both muggle and wizard worlds have a great deal of capability to inflict harm but neither really understands the other. The first side to learn effectively how to match their strengths against the others weaknesses will win. Given the muggles have a lot more people who have brains, talent, and expertise in something OTHER than waving a wand, my money's on the muggles.

Even if the wizards win, it's one thing to win the initial battle or war and another to make sure it stays won. If the wizards aren't careful, they may find that, if the muggle world is a "body", the wizards are to it not a disease but a vaccine -- they cause enough damage to force the muggle world to adapt to them, resulting in a muggle world with both the knowledge and capability to defeat the wizard world. Once this occurs, the "masquerade" on which the wizarding world depends will be torn for centuries, and it will be the end of organized wizard society. Those that survive will be individuals unaware of their power, until the muggles forget and allow them to grow again.

Hmm .. given this, why exactly does Voldemort want to fight muggles again? Why not just go to another planet and use magic to make it habitable? Or travel to another dimension uninhabited by muggles?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Tyndmyr]

Can someone please explain to me in what situation would this ever turn into a gun fight? I just don't see that scenario ever happening. Wizards would just lock themselves in their unplottable pocket dimensions and strike tactically. That's their go to strategy. What defenses could we possibly have against that?

D&D wizards, yes. D&D wizards in any substantial number, played the way we play them, would flatten us muggles.

Harry Potter wizards? God no. They don't know what tactics are. They don't seem to apparate much. They don't all live in pocket dimensions, and those that do seem to be tied to real world locations. So, they're gonna pop up somewhere, and strike something(probably not something terribly important), and get shot to hell because they don't know a great deal about what to expect.

Vold and Co are vicious, and violent, and amoral. They'll gleefully kill people on their way to kill more people, rules and strategy be damned. They do not carefully target the minimum number of people in the most tactical of strikes. That's just not who they are.

I think dodging bullets is referring to just moving erratically to make yourself a harder target and taking cover in a firefight. Which does make a big difference.

Taking cover matters a great deal. Last report I read, it was the single biggest factor in law enforcement officers surviving gunfights. Dodging bullets? Rather less of a thing. Bullets move remarkably fast, and gun barrels only need to move a few degrees to compensate for a pretty severe lunge on the targets part.

Under the lack of a nose and red snake eyes lies the same school boy that was capable of charming the entire world into thinking of him as a saint while he set a basilisk loose on the school's residents. Within his own world he's a master of deception. Yes he's arrogant. But that doesn't automatically make him stupid. Unless you can point to a scenario in which his arrogance will endanger his cause beyond "he reveals the wizarding world and makes it so muggles can locate wizards because he doesn't think he can do anything about it" I don't see how his arrogance is relevant. Because he really wouldn't ever do the above.

Sure. Stupidity is trying the same thing again and again and expecting different results. Trying the killing curse on potter the first time, as a baby? Well, failure there was a true surprise. No blame. Yet.

The second time? Look, the wizarding world has a LOT of ways to kill people. You'd think you'd have learned from the first mistake, given that it had kind of major consequences.

But no, even that wasn't enough. So...he tried it a third time.

Voldemort IS stupid, in his own way.

[pendell]

Taking cover matters a great deal. Last report I read, it was the single biggest factor in law enforcement officers surviving gunfights. Dodging bullets? Rather less of a thing. Bullets move remarkably fast, and gun barrels only need to move a few degrees to compensate for a pretty severe lunge on the targets part.

Check my thinking on this .. imagine wizards meet a platoon of muggles in the woods.

The wizards see the muggles first. They use their wands. Some, but not all, of the muggles die.

The survivors take cover. Suddenly the wizards have no line of sight, no targets for their wands.

The muggles use squad automatic weapons to generate 'suppressive fire', because an M60 or M249 don't need line-of-sight to put a LOT of lead downrange in a hurry.

I assume some, but not all, wizards will die. If they're smart and brave , they don't panic and run but instead find cover. The muggles then use fire & movement drill, keeping them suppressed while another section comes in from the side and solves the problem with guns, grenades, knives, or even fists and teeth.

If the wizards have bullet-proof charms and are standing up laughing at the muggles, they're still visible targets without anyone to shoot at themselves. How long does that charm hold out? Is it all-aspect or only one direction? Does it work equally well against rifle grenades? At any rate, if they're standing there giving the muggles a target, the muggles will cycle through the available weaponry until they find something that works. If they've got a radio and can call in mortar or artillery fire, or even one of these , well , there's a reason we say war is hell.

My bottom line is that it seems to me wizards are good at magic and not much else. I think the muggles have a better grasp of warfighting, counterintelligence, and counterterrorism. Until Voldemort et al finds a way to develop this expertise, the wizards are in trouble.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[comicshorse]

Its been ages since I read the books so : How good are mind control spells ?
Do they work for just the task ? IF not how long before they wear off ? Can the victim resist it ? Do the victims appear to be normal or do they act like zombies ? Can the victims do complicated or intellectual tasks ? If challenged can they come up with ggod reasons they're performing these strange tasks ?

[Fjolnir]

Considering Hermoine erases herself from her parent's minds and convinces them to get out of the country with magic, pretty darn effective.

[Xondoure]

Its been ages since I read the books so : How good are mind control spells ?
Do they work for just the task ? IF not how long before they wear off ? Can the victim resist it ? Do the victims appear to be normal or do they act like zombies ? Can the victims do complicated or intellectual tasks ? If challenged can they come up with ggod reasons they're performing these strange tasks ?

The victim can resist. The will save is ridiculously high. Only person I think we know for sure can pass it is Harry. Probably voldy and Dumbledore and a few others but we never see it. But imperio is very very good. It leaves the person just as capable as they were before and doesn't seem to have a time limit. This makes it the worst of the three in terms of how much damage it can do, and is the reason a lot of death eaters are still at large. They claimed they had been brainwashed and could not be blamed for their actions.

In regards to the assessing weaknesses of both sides thing. I agree. It just so happens that the wizards have a massive head start as the muggle world does not know they exist.

[Tyndmyr]

The issue is...Voldie doesn't just want to run a shadow government of puppets. He could have easily accomplished such in the wizarding world(and effectively did, along the way). He wants to be known and feared by all.

So, while working in secrecy IS effective, it's antithetical to who he is.

[Xondoure]

The issue is...Voldie doesn't just want to run a shadow government of puppets. He could have easily accomplished such in the wizarding world(and effectively did, along the way). He wants to be known and feared by all.

So, while working in secrecy IS effective, it's antithetical to who he is.

Longterm. My point in bringing up the chamber of secrets and his initial slow rise to power is that he can be very patient. He would make himself known eventually. Just after there was no way anyone stood a chance of stopping him. Just like he's tried to do every single time. The only reason he was found out during Harry's fifth year was because it didn't matter anymore. As quickly proven by him owning everything not eighteen months later.

[Friv]

See point 3.

Seriously, I love the books, but that masquerade would fall apart in a fortnight, if not quicker. Rowling just don't treat it serious enough.

Given that Hermione, a half-trained teenager (albeit a very skilled one, but still) is able to completely remove all memories of herself from her parents' minds, in a way that eradicated physical evidence and papered over all of the gaps, and which presumably also applied to everyone else who knew her or else the whole thing would collapse the instant someone asked her parents how she was doing, the masquerade could fall apart on a weekly basis and the wizarding world would still be able to restore it. Muggles are hilariously vulnerable to magic.

Check my thinking on this .. imagine wizards meet a platoon of muggles in the woods.

The wizards see the muggles first. They use their wands. Some, but not all, of the muggles die.

The survivors take cover. Suddenly the wizards have no line of sight, no targets for their wands.

The muggles use squad automatic weapons to generate 'suppressive fire', because an M60 or M249 don't need line-of-sight to put a LOT of lead downrange in a hurry.

Allow me to suggest an opposing situation. Five wizards meet a platoon of twenty muggles in the woods. The wizards use their wands, and five muggles are now on the side of the wizards. Those soldiers open fire on their allies at point-blank range, while the wizards duck for cover. The wizards then set the forest on fire and apparate away.

Or even better, a single wizard hops into a local barracks in the middle of the night and Imperios a hundred soldiers, leaving them in place to serve as information gatherers and saboteurs. That curse is crazy-powerful.

[comicshorse]

. This makes it the worst of the three in terms of how much damage it can do, and is the reason a lot of death eaters are still at large. They claimed they had been brainwashed and could not be blamed for their actions.

So you can just give somebody a whole new set of beliefs and leave them to run around enforcing these without bothering with them again ?
That is pretty damn useful

[Tyndmyr]

Longterm. My point in bringing up the chamber of secrets and his initial slow rise to power is that he can be very patient. He would make himself known eventually. Just after there was no way anyone stood a chance of stopping him. Just like he's tried to do every single time. The only reason he was found out during Harry's fifth year was because it didn't matter anymore. As quickly proven by him owning everything not eighteen months later.

And every time, he jumped the gun, and was not actually unstoppable.

And frankly, the only reason he was found out during Harry's fifth year is that essentially everyone in that universe lives while burying their heads firmly under the sand.

Given that Hermione, a half-trained teenager (albeit a very skilled one, but still) is able to completely remove all memories of herself from her parents' minds, in a way that eradicated physical evidence and papered over all of the gaps, and which presumably also applied to everyone else who knew her or else the whole thing would collapse the instant someone asked her parents how she was doing, the masquerade could fall apart on a weekly basis and the wizarding world would still be able to restore it. Muggles are hilariously vulnerable to magic.

We see a great many demonstrated examples that the protagonists, and hermoine in particular, are capable of pulling off better magic than the average wizard...even adult wizards, yes.

Using her as a barometer of average is likely flawed. In addition to being good with magic, she's also substantially better than average at using magic in intelligent ways. Other people would be vastly more likely to overlook things.

Allow me to suggest an opposing situation. Five wizards meet a platoon of twenty muggles in the woods. The wizards use their wands, and five muggles are now on the side of the wizards. Those soldiers open fire on their allies at point-blank range, while the wizards duck for cover. The wizards then set the forest on fire and apparate away.

Imperio is only ever depicted as being used from fairly close range, requires notable force of will, and can occasionally be resisted. Also, it's reasonable to assume that, as with essentially all potter magic, LOS is required. Lastly, if poorly done, it can have side effects(ie, the muggle minister from the books).

This is likely to result in a bunch of muggles dying, but a few wizards catching bullets. Look at the population levels. This is not a winning strategy for the wizards.

[Xondoure]

Apparate in under invisibility charms in the dead of night. Cast imperio on those sleeping. Wizards would never be taking bullets unless something went horribly wrong.

[Forum Explorer]

See point 3.

Seriously, I love the books, but that masquerade would fall apart in a fortnight, if not quicker. Rowling just don't treat it serious enough.

The biggest problem with Harry Potter is that Rowling just didn't want to deal with these sort of issues. Like the Hermonine example for instance. Wouldn't her neighbors notice her absence and talk to her parents about it? Who suddenly wouldn't know who they were talking about? Or blaming it on a hurricane when there clearly was no hurricane at all and the entire world would notice that! So either the Muggles in that universe are just as stupid as the wizards (and thus it isn't our world), or it's a plot hole you can fly Jupiter through and the biggest missed sequel hook ever.


I mean the reason for the Masquerade in the first place is: "Oh we don't want to be bothered. So lets go to insane lengths to prevent the Muggles from learning about us, including kicking wizards out of magical society."

[Avilan the Grey]

If we start speculating about things not explicitly in the books or movies: Am I the only one that finds it VERY weird that there is not an MI X division of government that does nothing but keep track of wizards and create countermeasures...

[Xondoure]

The biggest problem with Harry Potter is that Rowling just didn't want to deal with these sort of issues. Like the Hermonine example for instance. Wouldn't her neighbors notice her absence and talk to her parents about it? Who suddenly wouldn't know who they were talking about? Or blaming it on a hurricane when there clearly was no hurricane at all and the entire world would notice that! So either the Muggles in that universe are just as stupid as the wizards (and thus it isn't our world), or it's a plot hole you can fly Jupiter through and the biggest missed sequel hook ever.


I mean the reason for the Masquerade in the first place is: "Oh we don't want to be bothered. So lets go to insane lengths to prevent the Muggles from learning about us, including kicking wizards out of magical society."

I believe at a certain point a choice had to be made between rule the entire world with an iron fist or go into hiding. This because wizards had done a pretty bad job of endearing themselves to the nonmagical population. The purebloods are still angry that the wizarding world chose the second option.

[Nekura]

Originally Posted by Xondoure
Longterm. My point in bringing up the chamber of secrets and his initial slow rise to power is that he can be very patient. He would make himself known eventually. Just after there was no way anyone stood a chance of stopping him. Just like he's tried to do every single time. The only reason he was found out during Harry's fifth year was because it didn't matter anymore. As quickly proven by him owning everything not eighteen months later.

....I brought up the chamber of secrets and I don't see how you can claim it shows he is patient it shows the exact opposite. The diary knew it as riddle had opened the chamber before but had to stop because it was drawing too much attention from Dumbledore. Then from Ginny it learned how he ended up dieing years latter and never bothered with the chamber again as a waste of time. Either time he opened the chamber it brought few if any deaths toward his cause of killing "mudbloods" and brought attention he wasn't ready for. If anything it shows the creation of horcruxes did nothing good for his sanity or common sense.

You ignored me when I brought up that taking over the ministry was Malfoy's doing with his friends in high positions due to pureblood status and wealth not infiltration. It could have been done much sooner before the first war. Dumbledore or other "light" wizards wouldn't have been able to stop it. You say wizards getting into situations were they can be shot would being doing it wrong. Well that’s how they are shown to act doing it wrong. how do you expect them to get to where they can control all those high up people? You can't apperate to places unless you know them. The big issue is you don't seem able to separate what Voldemort would do and what you would do if you were Voldemort.

[Ravens_cry]

If we start speculating about things not explicitly in the books or movies: Am I the only one that finds it VERY weird that there is not an MI X division of government that does nothing but keep track of wizards and create countermeasures...

Who says there isn't?
After all, Muggles in high office know of magic.
Also, it bears repeating this would not be just the Muggles verses the Wizards, HWMNBN and company also wants to destroy the mudbloods and half-bloods, so it would be in their interest to try and help the Muggles, if only for their continued existence.
To the fan-fiction mobile!

[pendell]

Apparate in under invisibility charms in the dead of night. Cast imperio on those sleeping. Wizards would never be taking bullets unless something went horribly wrong.

Muggle counter to apparating wizards: Sentries. Guard dogs. Motion detectors. As the phenomenon of teleportation is better understood, possibly additional sensors or even technology to block teleportation altogether.

David Drake's At Any Price dealt with human mercenaries fighting teleporting aliens. It turns out (in the book ,anyway) , that a teleportation gives some warning -- ionization, air displacement -- and they built sensors to detect that activity, giving them a few seconds warning before the opponent materialized. For alert men with guns, this spelled the difference between life and death.


My point is, "catch men sleeping in their barracks" has been a strategy since before Alexander fought the Greeks. It's why the Romans made a point of building a camp every night. As the threats change, so the manner of protection changes as well.

I guess my point is that I don't believe that a war between humans is ever so simple as "I have the I win button technology, therefore I win". The laser rangefinder can be bashed with a rock . Force is only useful if it is used intelligently. Just as giving a rifle to a 17-year-old doesn't make him a soldier, so does giving a battery of abilities -- such as the ability to kill with a wand or mind-control a target -- to a wizard doesn't make him combat effective. It needs to be supported by intelligent doctrine which allow wizards to fight effectively. This doesn't exist in Rowling's books , because Rowling herself appears to have only a limited understanding of such things. Harry Potter is a once-upon-a-time fairy tale, and the more we try to impose the logic and rules of the real world on it, the more it comes apart at the seams.

Could the wizards win if they brought in Lord Hamster and took the time to learn how to fight muggles effectively? Most certainly. But as written in the books? I doubt it.



Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Xondoure]

We see just how effective alarm systems are against wizards with Horace Slughorn. And it really doesn't matter if Malfoy helped take control of the ministry, the point is that they subverted the ministry until the wizarding government was working for them. And that this would be oh so much easier to do to muggles.

I am not trying to create a distinction between what I would do and what Voldemort would do. Because I can only think of him in terms of how I perceive him. Basically, there are a million and one ways wizards could subvert and corrupt our system and we won't even know they're doing it until it's too late. I'm sorry but Voldemort is not so stupid as to throw away his advantages. Harry Potter is, and will always be an exception built upon every single flaw that could possibly have been exploited. And despite all of that he still would have won if it wasn't for one completely improbable development after another (as an example, the only thing required for this scenario of Voldemort versus the world to occur is Draco not disarming Dumbledore atop the tower.)

Honestly, in every Harry Potter vs. Thread it always comes down to "but they're all idiots" and I just don't understand that. Voldemort was exceptional. And not just gifted in magic, it takes charisma and intelligence to accomplish what he has regardless of his origin. This is a man so terrifying he has an entire population living in fear of saying his name. Not once is he ever portrayed in a losing scenario other than when facing Harry, and that is again mostly because he didn't hear the whole prophecy.

People bring up the doing the same thing and expecting different results as if it proves something when each time was different. Lily's protection appeared. So he bypassed that. Then priori incantatem interfered so he bypassed that. Then things got weird and he had to resort to the elder wand. Then horcruxes interfered. And then finally the elder wand's allegiance wasn't his based on a technicality. And the reason he thought he had to be the one to finish Harry was because all he knew was that if he did he could not be defeated.

So in short, Voldemort's smart. He does two things very well: use magic, and take control of things. He's done these two things very well since he could walk. He is also very patient. You have to be if you're going to suffer as a specter whenever someone get's cute and rebounds a killing curse at you. He does one thing very badly: understand love, because he's a raging sociopath.

Edit: If they are ever fighting muggles at all something has gone horribly wrong. This is not a war, it's just a massacre. Wizards get serious and the nuclear fallout will kill more than anything else. Our weapons are their weapons. Our leaders are their pawns. The only thing that isn't theirs is our infrastructure. But they don't need that so that's quickly brought down as well.

[Fjolnir]

The biggest problem with Harry Potter is that Rowling just didn't want to deal with these sort of issues. Like the Hermonine example for instance. Wouldn't her neighbors notice her absence and talk to her parents about it? Who suddenly wouldn't know who they were talking about? Or blaming it on a hurricane when there clearly was no hurricane at all and the entire world would notice that! So either the Muggles in that universe are just as stupid as the wizards (and thus it isn't our world), or it's a plot hole you can fly Jupiter through and the biggest missed sequel hook ever.


I mean the reason for the Masquerade in the first place is: "Oh we don't want to be bothered. So lets go to insane lengths to prevent the Muggles from learning about us, including kicking wizards out of magical society."

The point is that she brainwashes them into making them MOVE to an area where there aren't going to be people she has to chain brainwash in order to make her house of cards stable.

[Nekura]

We see just how effective alarm systems are against wizards with Horace Slughorn.

Do we? I don't recall them mentioning any alarm systems on that house. A lot of homes don't have them.

And it really doesn't matter if Malfoy helped take control of the ministry, the point is that they subverted the ministry until the wizarding government was working for them.

It wasn't so much help as Malfoy doing everything. And the point is that it could have been done much sooner and easier with someone competant running the show instead of Voldemort.

I am not trying to create a distinction between what I would do and what Voldemort would do.

That is what the problem is. You don't have to create a distinction it's already there as shown in his actions in the books. You can't see the distinction between what wizards do and what you would do in their place. You say no muggles know of wizards. Well if you ran the show for wizards you most likely wouldn't let them know. However in the books muggle governments already know and it's unrealistic they wounldn't set up plans with that knowledge. there are also a lot of families with muggleborns that know.

He is also very patient. You have to be if you're going to suffer as a specter whenever someone get's cute and rebounds a killing curse at you.

Having no good plan to get a body back and having no other choice but to suffer as a specter is not a good example of patience. You have yet to give a good example of him being patient.

[Gnoman]

Actually, that's an excellent example of patience. He himself described the state as one in which he had to continually will himself to exist. If you can't show patience, there's no way to survive in such a state. Other examples of him showing patience:

The entirety of Book 5. Once he has returned to power, he might as well not exist. For an entire year. He has things moving behind the scenes, but his failure to kill Harry in book 4 is the only reason anybody but his followers know he's back.

1945- (unknown, but it appears to be somewhere in the mid-60s early 70s.) While he's still planning and waiting, he seems to have taken little open action at this point. While Dumbledore, who always suspected what Riddle could be, has heard "dark rumours," and he has changed his name, it is unqestionable that he has not yet become the Dark Lord that he was destined to be, as it seems that only Dumbledore has suspicions of him.

[Nekura]

If he had to will himself to exist the horcruxes were not doing the job properly. They anchored him what was he going to do kill himself? It wasn't him waiting patiently to enact a plan he had no plan. Dumbledore having the stone in school wasn't anything he could have planned he just reacted. No death eater contacted him and he didn't contact them. He was clearly mobile as a wraith but did nothing in all that time obvious or behind the scenes.

He was only laying low because he was scared how Harry was able to beat him and trying to figure out how the wands locking happened. Any working behind the scenes was unlikely to have him behind it as that’s not how he operates.

Ok so he was willing to recruit followers instead of trying to take over the world by himself right out of school. That shows some patience but the way he tried to take over after getting those recruits shows a lack of patience and not subtle infiltrations. The only reason it almost worked was because people like DUMBledore refused to let people fight the war as a war and kill the death eaters not careful planning.

[Forum Explorer]

The point is that she brainwashes them into making them MOVE to an area where there aren't going to be people she has to chain brainwash in order to make her house of cards stable.

Yeah but moving isn't subtle. I don't even have neighbors and I bet if I moved people would show up and start asking questions. Also unless they were retired (I think they were actually dentists) then their co-workers and customers would also have questions. It's a house of cards no matter what. Something big like that can't be done with the power described in the books.

[Xondoure]

If he had to will himself to exist the horcruxes were not doing the job properly. They anchored him what was he going to do kill himself? It wasn't him waiting patiently to enact a plan he had no plan. Dumbledore having the stone in school wasn't anything he could have planned he just reacted. No death eater contacted him and he didn't contact them. He was clearly mobile as a wraith but did nothing in all that time obvious or behind the scenes.

He was only laying low because he was scared how Harry was able to beat him and trying to figure out how the wands locking happened. Any working behind the scenes was unlikely to have him behind it as that’s not how he operates.

Ok so he was willing to recruit followers instead of trying to take over the world by himself right out of school. That shows some patience but the way he tried to take over after getting those recruits shows a lack of patience and not subtle infiltrations. The only reason it almost worked was because people like DUMBledore refused to let people fight the war as a war and kill the death eaters not careful planning.

See I think the issue is we have very different ideas of the characters. I remember reading about a cold, calculating, ruthless man who outsmarted and outgunned the wizarding world at every turn. And that's exactly what I saw. Yes he uses fear in his tactics. So do a lot of real world powers. That doesn't invalidate any and all use of tactics.

And you simply can't say the only thing he was doing during their fifth year was studying wand lore, and that this proves incompetence. The death eaters managed to dance circles around the ministry the entire time including breaking the most dangerous of his followers out of askaban.

Anyways my point is you seem to have separated Voldemort from any and all competence shown by the villains in your head and are using that as a justification for him doing something stupid in his coming take over of everything. When even if he was separated the fact that his minions can be that competent should not be ignored.